He's My Lawyer
by stefanie bean
Summary: Dan Norton never gets enough appreciation for being Benjamin Linus's lawyer. But the day Ben walked into Agostini and Norton was the luckiest one of Dan's life. Or so it seemed at the time.
1. Son of the Old Sod

**Chapter 1: Son of the Old Sod**

Dan Norton arrived at his law office at precisely 7:30 AM on a fine Southern California morning. The night before, the Steelers had beaten Seattle 21-10 in the Superbowl, and while Norton hadn't even watched the game, he had some scratch riding on Pittsburgh. A lot of scratch, in fact, and he was in a pretty chipper mood.

He balanced an overstuffed briefcase and a mocha-jalapeño latte in meaty paws a little too large for his short frame. Risking a sip, he basked in the knowledge that he'd been the one to talk the Kaffee Klutch barista into adding fresh jalapeño to ordinary chocolate. Now the combo graced the menu as a house specialty.

Dan's law office rested on the thirty-ninth floor of a glass-and-steel column that looked like a rocket ready to launch into orbit. If the building actually did blast off, the afterburners would take out the entire lobby, including the pedestrians cutting through, as well as the homeless people sheltering under its buttresses.

He loved the law firm of Agostini and Norton with an intensity second only to what he felt for his mother and his mistress. Founder Tomo Agostini lay seven years in the grave, but Dan still flushed with affection at the memory of the gruff old Sicilian with his thick Brooklyn accent and crass pin-striped suits. When the old man finally died, practically every mob organization in Southern California owed favors to Agostini and Norton.

Those had been good times, back when Dan was slaving eighty hours a week for a partnership, defending one Cosa Nostra member after another in federal court and usually winning. After making partner, Dan got the bright idea to fire a couple of unproductive young lawyers and take on half a dozen accountants and computer specialists in their stead.

Red-faced, Agostini had sputtered that he couldn't fire those men; they were family. At first Dan thought the old man was going to do something rash. If it was over for him, well, Dan had had a great run and couldn't complain.

But Agostini surprised him. The old man unbuttoned his suit coat from across his ball gut and listened as Dan explained that computers were the wave of the future. Nobody carried money around in suitcases anymore. If you wanted to do the laundry right, you used the spiffy new detergent, and that meant electronic funds transfers. EFTs in their turn meant accountants.

Agostini offered Dan a fat Cuban cigar, which he politely declined. One of the new men had a wife who was an accountant, Agostini mused. Norton could hire her. And some of the guys' sons were majoring in that inscrutable field, computer science. No problem. Agostini thumped Norton hard on the back and declared that was what he hired his Danny-boy for, even if he was a goddamn Mick.

As Agostini grew older, the US Department of Justice made better use of both federal racketeering laws and their own accountants, and the organized-crime legal business petered out. The accountants and the geek boys stayed, though. Nobody could say the Agostini firm wasn't interested in fresh ideas.

Dan's lucky day had come in 1997, when a slight, youngish-looking man with prominent deep-set eyes walked into the office. No, he didn't have an appointment. Yes, he understood that Mr. Norton was very busy. Even so, would she please inform Mr. Norton that Mr. Benjamin Linus wished to speak with him.

Agostini and Norton had secretaries, good ones, and Deirdre Hannegan was the best. Through his half-open door, Dan heard Deirdre coldly inform the visitor that Mr. Norton was in court and would be all day.

"Don't kid a kidder," Linus said. "I know very well that Mr. Norton isn't in court, and if he's smart, he'll clear his desk for a meeting right now."

Deirdre told Linus to wait. A little green light lit up on Dan's phone, a signal from Deirdre to let him know that a potential big fish was on the hook. If Dan wanted to take the risk, he'd ring her back, tell her to send the whale in. If not, he'd ignore it, and eventually the minnow would get bored and swim away.

Two hours later, spurred by curiosity, Dan poked his head into the waiting room. Linus sat unmoving on an orange Danish-modern chair, staring straight at Deirdre with a ghastly half-smile.

If a barracuda could grin, that's what it would look like.

Dan surrendered to the best decision of his career. "Come on in, Mr. Linus."

He had been getting tired of the few remaining mobsters and their petty, inept money-laundering schemes. On slow days, he wondered if he should try to run one himself. He knew he could do it and not get caught.

In short, Dan was ready for something easy, and Linus's proposal seemed almost heaven-sent. So much money for so little effort, that at first Dan sat noncommittal, while Linus explained what he wanted the law firm to do.

"Keep the government off Mittelos Bioscience's back. Smooth out any obstacles to the product imports from the Tunisia division. Pay the taxes, the fees, the tariffs. All of them."

Dan glanced down at his notes, wondering if Linus was deranged. "I could save you ten, twenty percent right off the top. That's even before we go over the books."

Instead of answering, Linus settled into silence.

"All right," Dan grumbled. "Your time, your dime. Compliance is going to cost you."

"Not in the long run it won't. Privacy is what I'm buying, Mr. Norton. I want Mittelos to squeak like a pig scrubbed for the county fair if any spotlights shine on it." He shrugged, and his eyes protruded a little more. "The last CEO left things in disarray. Charles Widmore is our biggest competitor now."

Aha, Dan thought. A chink in the armor. Mr. Linus had a temper, even if he kept it under wraps.

Dan had a little button of his own, which he pressed with his knee while pretending to take notes. Deirdre's phone lit up with a blue light which had one purpose, and one alone. Initiate a high-colonic investigation of this guy. Check him out, down to what he had for breakfast this morning. Get the Morrison Agency on it, which meant spare no expense.

When Dan said, "I'll get back to you, Mr. Linus," the small man didn't bat an eyelash. Instead, he recited in a cool, passionless voice, "Daniel Lawrence Norton, of Boston, Massachusetts. Graduated summa cum laude in mathematics, MIT, 1972. Quit his first year of mathematics doctoral studies at Princeton to study law at Harvard. Editor of the Crimson Law Review—"

"You may be paying me, but I'll never get the time back," Dan snapped. "That's all in Who's Who."

"I'll tell you what's not in Who's Who. Your mother Bridget, age 74, has been funneling money for years into Sinn Fein. But not all of it stays in Sinn Fein, does it, Dan? Some of it makes its way into Eastern Europe, where a lot of sellers want to match up their products with willing buyers. I believe you once told her on the phone in a half-joking manner that this is what happens when women get involved in politics. She even laughed." Linus licked his lips, the first spontaneous gesture he'd made since entering the office. "I certainly wouldn't talk to my mother like that."

Dan's phone rang. It was Deirdre, and Dan hoped that Linus didn't see the thin film of sweat which had formed on his upper lip.

"He checks out, Dan," said Deirdre. "Chief Operations Officer of Mittelos Bioscience of Portland, like he said. The car's a company vehicle."

"Thanks, Didi. Take an early lunch, OK? And pick up a gyros for me from that food truck on Wilshire."

"Sure, boss."

Dan's use of "Didi" meant that she was to flip off the recorder which had been preserving the interview for posterity. "Early lunch" meant draw up the new client paperwork but handle with care, because eventually there would be two sets, one for anyone with a badge who came knocking, and one which stayed internal to Agostini and Norton.

Dan wouldn't touch a gyros even if it made him crap gold. He'd been eating vegan since his mild coronary of the summer before. Not even a real coronary, the doctors had said. Just a twitch. A tiny blockage. But Dan wasn't taking any chances. Instead of a gyros, what Dan really wanted was for Dick Morrison's boyos to put a tail on Ben Linus when he left the law office.

"I'd like a gyros, too," Linus said right after Dan hung up.

"Too late. Already placed the order."

"But in your case, Dan, is it really a good idea? I mean, with a history of heart disease and all."

"So maybe I should give you mine, huh?"

"Well, if you're offering—"

Dan got up and walked around his desk. His slow-motion pace gave the impression he was swimming through air, and his eyes never left Linus's. Seating himself in the chair opposite Linus, he spoke in quiet voice. "Don't fuck with me, Benjamin. Never, ever fuck with me." He noted how Linus winced at the obscenity. "Because all I have to do is make a phone call to Mr. Widmore and tell him about your little proposition."

"You wouldn't do that. You'd get disbarred."

"You naive son-of-a-bitch," Dan said. "You were raised Methodist, weren't you? Or maybe Congregationalist, or whatever they're calling it these days. So I'm betting you don't know what a white martyr is."

Benjamin Linus shook his head.

"My mother would like nothing more than to become a white martyr to liberate Northern Ireland from the boys in orange. I keep telling her that nobody is going to send a seventy-five year old grandma to Club Fed for buying the Provos a few guns, but she doesn't believe me. So go ahead, Ben, make her day. But think twice, because if you do, your life will suddenly become very, very difficult." He leaned away from Linus, settling back into his own chair. "And work on that wince, why don't you? Your prissy little expressions are going to give you away every time."

So began the long association between Benjamin Linus and the law firm of Agostini and Norton.

( _continued_ )


	2. A New Client

**Chapter 2: A New Client**

On this fine morning after Superbowl XL, Dan figured that it wouldn't kill him or the firm if he took a few minutes to savor his gambling winnings.

He should get something special for Deirdre, something nice. Maybe one of those pamina scarves, a bright teal one to show off her red hair. Take her up to Sona in West Hollywood, where their dumpy middle-aged selves could stare right back at the beautiful people. To be honest, he was the dumpy one, while Didi had more curves than a Topanga Canyon mountain road. Rail-thin might be your typical Angeleno's type, but it sure as hell wasn't his.

Dan rested secure in the knowledge that while Los Angeles represented the fast lane, he and Deirdre were the thick black asphalt upon which all those speeding Porsches ran.

Some of the younger partners and associates had looked askance when he took Deirdre as his mistress. Fuck them, though. What they didn't know was that Dan planned to make her a partner in the firm. To his knowledge it had never been done for a non-lawyer, but Agostini and Norton hadn't gotten to where they were by being sticks-in-the-mud. And he couldn't run this place without her. They worked like a smoothly-oiled team, dancing their slow tango of discreet deception across Southern California.

Better yet, make her a partner in more than just the legal business. Dan had never been married, and neither had Didi. Maybe it was time to look into a merger.

OK, enough of this. Time to get to work. First appointment, 9:00 AM, David and Carmen Reyes. Why was that name familiar? Dan glanced quickly down the screen, saw he had a civil court appearance at 10:30, and wondered why Didi was cutting it so close. This one was a criminal case, and from the notes it looked like a real piece of shit. Failure to follow police orders. Fleeing the scene. High-speed pursuit across LA County. Resisting arrest. Why the hell was this even on his desk?

He picked up the phone. "Lindstrom, get me everything on that Reyes high-speed chase. Yeah, it was all over the news last week. ASAP, 'cause they're going to be here in fifteen. No, I haven't got a clue why this is on my board and not yours, you being at the bottom of the food chain and all. Just get it to me, fast. And get in here for the 9 AM consult. Yes, it has billable hours. Ambitious, aren't we?"

Karla Lindstrom was the most junior of the associates. Brilliant kid from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, JD and CPA both, the only kind he hired these days. Karla was one of the best, but even the best still had to slave in the galley for awhile before they got to come up on deck. If Dan had learned anything from old man Agostini, it was that.

Hell, might as well give her the case, because he sure as death and taxes didn't want to drag himself over to the LA County Criminal Division and waste his time on a stupid resisting case.

Then something caught his eye and stuck there. It wasn't David Reyes who had been arrested, but his son Hugo. Reyes Junior was cooling his heels in the LA County jail, refusing bail, and his parents were honoring his wishes. Not that they couldn't pay it. The Reyes family was loaded to the tune of hundreds of millions. Son Hugo had won the lottery back in '03, and the money had multiplied like rabbits.

Then, to top it off, Reyes had survived a plane crash and been stranded for three months on some god-forsaken Pacific island. The Oceanic Six, the press had called the few survivors.

Apparently Reyes had freaked out in a convenience store over in West Hollywood and tore-ass out of there, ignoring the cherries as he sped up and down the Santa Monica Freeway. An hour later he exited the freeway and crashed somewhere down near Anaheim.

Probably drugged to the gills. It was the curse of the trust-fund kid, but not this time, because the tox screens had all come back negative. Still a real piece of shit, though. Only now it was just a matter of letting the meter run, because at least this one was no pro bono. He'd make sure to bill at prime rates, even if Lindstrom was doing most of the work.

Whoah, what was this? Lindstrom had thought of everything, and she'd searched the firm's own database as well. They already had a file on Hugo Reyes from 2003, a big one. Something about a 5150 hold for threatened suicide.

What the hell were they doing with this? Dan searched through the notes, intrigued now, and jumped a little when Deirdre buzzed him. The Reyeses had arrived.

"Let them wait for a few," he growled, and kept reading. Oh, crap, this one was hot. Jerome Curtis had fished Reyes Junior off of LA County General's fifteenth floor and gotten him transferred to that clinic of his up near Placerita Canyon, Santa Rosa something.

Son Reyes hadn't won the lottery then, not by a long shot. Mother separated from father; house one missed payment away from foreclosure, kid was a fry-cook making a skosh above minimum wage. Yet he'd stayed inpatient for five months at Mittelos Bioscience's expense.

Damn, another part of the Benjamin Linus project, a real firecracker. This wasn't a piece of shit at all. Au contrarey, as the French would say.

Surprising nobody had filed an OSHA investigation on Mittelos, for that matter. They had a whole wing up there at Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute reserved just for them. For most, a regular revolving door. For some, the door was one-way.

Dan reached for the phone again. "Deirdre, tell Lindstrom that I won't need her on the Reyes case at all. She can just keep working on that research I gave her Friday. But call Doc Curtis, top priority, and tell him one of his Santa Rosa boys is in the LA lockup. That's right. Reyes." Norton sat back for a few seconds, breathing heavily, wondering what the hell was going on, not liking that sensation one bit.

* * *

When Deirdre finally let the Reyeses into Dan's office, the mother was dabbing her eyes with a mascara-smeared tissue. Her rose-covered magenta dress clashed with her husband's orange silk button-down shirt, its breast pocket emblazoned with an embroidered monogram.

Dan kept his face impassive.Why the hell did new money dress like that? Look at those white buck leather shoes, for Christ's sake.

Mama Reyes had attempted some last-minute facial repairs which did nothing to keep her red nose from shining through uneven pancake makeup. Dan could smell Papa Reyes's nervousness, but he was pretty collected all the same, as he focused on keeping his wife more or less calm.

Dan's approach was to just let them talk. After all, the meter was running.

Mrs. Reyes started sniffling, "My son," in between loud honks into the tissue. So Dan looked at Mr. Reyes, who said in an affable voice, "Call me David."

"Your son's the luckiest guy in the world, David," Dan remarked, looking up from Hugo's recent mug shot. A wild brown halo of hair surrounded a plump face whose tiny smile shone with uncanny Buddha-like beatitude. To look at him, you'd never believe that the booking officer claimed the perp had become hysterical and begged to be hospitalized.

Dan went on, "Most young men with his surname try to pull what he did, they wind up shot by the LAPD and nobody asks questions. But he's still in a lot of trouble." He let this sink in for a few beats. "We're talking a possible ten-year felony conviction, unless we plead it down. Then maybe three to five. Lucky there wasn't a weapon involved."

As Dan expected, Mrs. Reyes started to cry even louder.

"If Mr. Reyes wants me to be his lawyer, he's going to have to ask on his own," Dan concluded. "From what I see here, he hasn't been 5150'd again. Yet."

"I want you to talk some sense into him," David said.

Dan sighed. "David, your son is twenty-eight years old. Kind of late for the old 'scared straight' speech, wouldn't you say?"

"Just talk to him. Please."

And say what? Suppressing a frown, Dan flipped through Hugo Reyes's copious psychiatric file. Major depression with psychotic features. Complex, extended visual and auditory hallucinations. Flatness of affect. Binge eating disorder. Well, that was obvious from the mug shot.

Strangely enough, Reyes had never been prescribed anti-psychotics. None of the Santa Rosa boys had.

Something cold and clammy flickered through Dan's gut, the sense he got right before a big break in a complicated case. A thought rose up, and try as he might, he couldn't push it down. It was almost as if they wanted these boys to see things. They didn't want to fuzz up the channel.

The Reyeses were staring at him openly now, and Dan put the file down. There was something here, he knew it. Something big. Whether he should get dragged into it was another issue.

"I don't want Hugo to go to jail," the mother said in a small, snuffly voice.

The last vestige of Dan's resistance collapsed. Not because of Carmen Reyes's red, leaking eyes. Not because despite himself, he liked the father's warm calm and his tenderness towards his wife. Papa Reyes was one of those clients he'd have loved to knock back a few shots with, under different circumstances.

Not even because of the "wouldn't hurt a fly" kindness he sensed in Hugo Reyes's face.

Sure, Dan could pass the case to Karla Lindstrom for a plea-bargain. Wash his hands of it. Move on to something that would keep him out of the stink and chaos of Criminal. But then he'd never know exactly why Mittelos Bioscience paid Jerome Curtis and Martin Brooks boo-coo bucks to keep an inpatient wing when everybody not a movie star got ten days a year and psych meds.

Why so many of them had a history of serving or traveling in the South Pacific. Like Reyes.

Why so many of them looked like schizophrenics on paper, but weren't being medically treated as such.

Dan leaned back and smiled at the Reyeses. If they would have known him better, they would have quailed at his blank, predatory gaze, even though it wasn't directed towards them. He steepled his fingers as his mental wheels started to grind. "You're in good hands, Mr. and Mrs. Reyes. Let me make a few calls, see if they've sent your son over to LA County Hospital yet. I'll speak with him this afternoon."

In the midst of their parental relief, protestations of thanks, and more tears, the foremost question hung before Dan like fruit ripe for the picking: What did Benjamin Linus have to do with all of this?

( _continued_ )


	3. The Way Back

**Chapter 3: The Way Back**

Dan Norton didn't make it out of the Civil Courts building until after three. By the time he arrived at the Los Angeles County lockup, a bored bailiff informed him that Hugo Reyes had already been released for his psych eval.

"Great," Dan muttered. He liked the psychiatric floor of Los Angeles County General even less than the lock-up. Some instinct made Dan reach over the counter and snatch Reyes's paperwork from the top of the messy pile. The bailiff didn't even look up, engrossed as he was in his crossword puzzle.

This wasn't possible, Dan said to himself as he read. Rather than sending Reyes to County General, they shipped him straight off to Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. How the hell had that happened so fast?

There it was, however, signed in black and white by a judge who Dan regularly tangled with when she was a prosecutor. He quickly scanned the orders: a 5150 hold pending indictment; prisoner to be remanded to the custody of Dr. Jerome Curtis, MD, with the transfer effective as of 1 PM that afternoon.

Dan sighed and dropped the papers onto the counter. As the glass door swung shut behind him, he figured there was no point in driving up to Placerita Canyon tonight. Reyes wasn't going anywhere.

* * *

The next morning, as soon as he got out of court, Dan headed northwest out of Los Angeles to the Santa Rosa clinic. The trip should have been a reverse commute, but traffic on the freeway stood frozen. He cursed the long ribbon of red lights in front of him, cradling his cellphone as he dialed Deirdre. When she picked up, he barked, "You ever get hold of Linus?"

"Don't snap at me, Daniel," she said back in an icy tone. "I'm doing all I can."

Great, he was in trouble now. "Sorry, Didi. There's just something about this case that puts me on edge." They continued to talk, Deirdre spitting out bullet points about upcoming appointments and hearings, Dan murmuring acknowledgments. When he tried his luck with the mountain road short-cut to Placerita Canyon, Los Angeles disappeared behind him and so did his cellphone signal.

Dan hated driving into the mountains. Even though the city rested securely at his back, the stark chaparral-speckled forms loomed over him. _You're on our turf now_ , they seemed to say. Some day, after all of Los Angeles crumbled into dust-dry wilderness, the mountains would still be here.

The lemon-yellow sunlight did nothing to cheer him, either, as it filled his rear-view mirror with eye-stabbing brilliance. Finally he came to his destination: a broad white complex with red-tiled roofs, the buildings sheltering under the highest peaks of the Placerita Canyon range. The staff lot was full, but the one for visitors was completely empty.

Not surprising. From what he'd heard, he wouldn't have expected the patients here to get much company.

He was just about to get out of the car when the phone rang. Deirdre, still cool, told him that Benjamin Linus was out of the country and unreachable by phone or email.

Dan couldn't even manage to work up an expletive.

* * *

Once inside, a smiling nurse escorted Dan through cool, dimly-lit hallways whose arches reminded him of convents and soft, chanting voices. Her name tag read, "Susan Lazenby, PMHNP," whatever that meant. As they paused before closed double doors, she said, "Hugo just joined us yesterday, and we're still stabilizing his medications. When you speak with him, he'll probably have a bit of confusion, as well as some drowsiness."

Nurse Lazenby flung open the doors to a brightly-lit room decorated like a nursery school, with paper cut-out bugs and flowers all over the walls. Patients, mostly men, shuffled about in slippers, their sashless bathrobes flopping about their legs. Along one wall, a fortyish man with curly brown hair carefully felt the wall as he inched along it, as if looking for an opening to magically appear there.

Dan stopped, confused at the room's silence, at how none of the patients even seemed aware of him. At least it wasn't like the VA hospital where they'd stuck his brother after he came back from Gulf War I. This place was clean, and the staff wore small, relaxed smiles along with their white scrubs.

The brown-haired man kept inching along the wall.

Susan Lazenby touched his arm, and Dan jumped. "Over here."

In the center of the room, a fat man had spread himself out on the shabby, olive-green couch as if it were a throne. He wore the same remote, placid smile as his mug shot, which failed to do justice to his fleshy immensity.

Hugo Reyes was tied to earth just enough to give Dan a beaming smile. _Great,_ Dan thought as he stood before Hugo. _I'll_ _be lucky to get five coherent words out of_ _him_.

Dan scowled first at the crowded community room, then at the nurse. "This isn't acceptable. I've got to talk to my client alone. How about his room?"

"Sorry, Mr. Norton. No one is allowed in rooms with patients except staff."

"For Christ's sake—" Dan began, when a few low chimes broke the stillness.

"Lunch-time," Nurse Lazenby said. "In a few moments this room will clear out, and then you can interview your client."

The crowd slowly shuffled towards the door. Reyes struggled to his feet to join them, but Nurse Lazenby put a hand on his shoulder. "You have a visitor, Hugo. Your attorney. We'll bring your lunch to your room afterwards."

It might have been an unkind thought, but Reyes didn't get to that size by missing many lunches. Immediately Dan felt bad, because Reyes turned luminous brown eyes on him and mumbled, "Yeah, my dad told me."

The wall-crawler still fumbled along the fingerprint-stained surface. "What about him?" Dan grumbled to the nurse, who was almost out the door.

"Oh, I don't think he'll be any problem," Nurse Lazenby said. Was that amusement Dan heard in her tone? "He doesn't even know you're here."

* * *

Alone with Dan, Reyes sank into the couch as if he could sit there all afternoon. All Dan could think was, _Sad. Just sad_. He tried not to feel sorry for clients, and especially not for their family members. This one, though, what a case for the textbooks.

The interview started off fairly well, with Reyes agreeing to let Dan's firm represent him. He could mostly string words together in sentences, but sometimes he drifted off like an unmoored boat, only to float back after a moment. His mostly-coherent account of the car chase matched Detective Walton's report, which was a pleasant surprise.

Dan told himself that at least he didn't have to wade through a thicket of lies.

He arranged his paperwork to go, but Reyes wasn't done yet. He leaned forward and said, "There's something else, but I'm not supposed to tell."

"Tell what?" There was more? Dan groaned inside, his hand cramped from an hour of writing.

"You do that lawyer confidential stuff, right?"

"Confidentiality, you mean? Absolutely. Whatever you tell me stays with me, just like a priest."

The big man's shoulders slumped as if weight rolled off them. He looked to the left, then right, but the wall-crawler wasn't paying them a scrap of attention, so Reyes began to speak in slurred tones.

What followed was the most ludicrous, insane tale Dan had ever heard. He didn't even bother to write it down: a miracle crash onto an uncharted Island, a column of black smoke that chased people, armed mercenaries who wanted to kill them, a bird that spoke his name as it flew by. Lots of people dying, like Boone, Charlie, a girl named Libby. Another girl named Claire vanished into the forest one night, abandoning her baby. At the women's names, tears stood in Reyes's eyes.

All of it orchestrated by a man named Ben. He was the one the mercs were after.

Dan's insides froze, and he sprang up like a puppet yanked on a string. "Benjamin... Linus? You know Benjamin Linus?"

Reyes heaved his bulk to his feet too, sending the couch skidding across the linoleum to crash into a metal table. "What?" he shouted, his mouth forming into a round "O" of terror. "Ben? What about Ben? He's not here, is he?"

Dan cursed his slip-up. The interview was over, because at Reyes's first cry, Nurse Lazenby and a strapping aide rushed in to flank the hysterical man. Nurse Lazenby placed her face very close to Reyes's and said, "Hugo, you're going to go with Barney now."

Reyes kept hyperventilating, eyes wide with terror.

"Do you need a shot?" she said, still calm as a nun kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament. Dan had seen that look before. It took him right back to Sister Robert Bellarmine's catechism class. "It's all right," she went on. "I'll give you a shot if you want."

"I just wanna go to my room now," Reyes whimpered. "I don't need a shot."

Dan tried to pick up his legal pad, but his hands shook so badly that he stopped. First, that unbelievable story, and now this.

Wall-crawler turned the inside corner and started on the next section.

"Barney, take Hugo along," Nurse Lazenby said.

The aide brushed by Norton, putting a thick, muscular arm around Reyes's shoulder. "Come on, Hugo. We're gonna get you your lunch." Barney smiled, showing off a mouthful of enamel-white teeth. "Just a little low blood sugar, right? Get some lasagna in you, you be right as rain."

After the orderly left with Reyes in tow, Nurse Lazenby gave Dan a critical, clinical look-over. "Are _you_ all right, Mr. Norton?"

Dan wasn't, not by a long shot, not with his knees shaking as badly as his hands. Hating his weakness, he sank back onto a metal folding chair. "I just need... a moment." Head reeling, stomach churning, he pointed to the silent, creeping patient. "What the hell is the deal with him?"

Nurse Lazenby smiled the same calm smile. "He's looking for the opening in the wall that will take him back."

"Take him back? Back where?" As Dan asked, he already knew the answer, and everything inside rose up his gorge. "Back where, damn it?"

She fixed him with eyes black as a beetle's shell. "You know where, Mr. Norton. Didn't Hugo tell you?"

That monstrous story. A horrific possibility rose in Dan. "That one, he's been there too, hasn't he? Like Reyes."

Instead of answering, she glanced over to the far corner of the ceiling, where a camera blinked with its single red eye.

Words tumbled through Dan's mind about how he was going to fucking sue them all right into Riverside County, that he had a right to meet privately with his clients, that heads were going to roll, but every word died on his lips.

The wall-crawler inched his snail's-pace course across the surface and the camera tracked his every movement, ignoring everything except the creeping man.

"Why?" Dan whispered, finally.

"Because, Mr. Norton, perhaps some day the door in the wall will open, and when it does, he'll find it."

"Find it," Dan mouthed like an echolalic patient.

"You never know. Someday he might find his way back."

Dan stared at the empty doorway, as if the ghost of Hugo Reyes's form still lingered there.

( _the end_ )


End file.
